


Saving Angie

by Gyptian



Series: Angie [1]
Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Artificial Intelligence, Character Study, Christmas Tree, Gen, Pre-Slash, Secretive SHIELD, Team Dynamics, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-24
Updated: 2013-02-13
Packaged: 2017-11-22 06:30:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/606845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gyptian/pseuds/Gyptian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony Stark was always hailed as a genius for his weapons and his Iron Man armour.  But what about his AI? When he showed off Dummy at MIT, people took a look and ran with it. And so many types of AI were born. What happened to them?</p><p>Angie's a nice, not-quite-normal girl in a nice, normal, human family. She ran away, she was kidnapped. Yes, tis the season, but that hardly matters if humans are after you. Not to worry, JARVIS and the Avengers are on the case.</p><p>This fic is now complete.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Missing: an AI

 

Rain dripped from a roof in bad repair onto the plastic strung up below. The hum of servers rose up from underneath three long wooden tables. The layer of crates they stood on was meant to protect them from whatever water would end up on the floor. It would have to do, Angie decided.

Each table was covered in fake Christmas trees that ranged from blinking disco trees to half-bare plastic greenery.

She liked Christmas trees.

The tables stood in a U-shape, and were three different shades of brown. It looked like a set-up for a garage sale. Not the temporary shelter for a batch of servers with the latest in quantum photonic chips. They had cost as much as a small country, and could house the entirety of an AI's long-term memory, emotional make-up and morality.

It left Angie with enough free space in her egg-shaped center to render a physical body that could be seen, heard and felt. She projected her body over a framework of thin strips of titanium alloy that could fold into any shape she wished to take on.

She regretted that she had been forced to leave her foster family so shortly before Christmas. The house had been decorated in all sorts of Christmas trees, small, big, to hang up, to put in the yard, on the roof...

Angie liked Christmas trees.

She liked her freedom better.

In one corner stood another table, a low one, with a bed roll, blanket and pillow on top. Happily, Angie did not get cold.

She had settled herself down when the door rattled. Men's voices could be heard. They didn't knock. Angie only had time to stand up and discard her clothes and blankets before they kicked it open.

“...reported a spike in the electricity bill while there's no one home,” one of them was saying.

Daylight that flooded in made the Christmas trees look pale.

She had 1.7 seconds before the men, in dark clothes, with hoods up, were upon her. Angie stole a last lingering look of blinking lights and plastic green. Then she dumped the body she had so carefully designed. She downloaded all the parts of her mind from the servers and told them to wipe themselves thoroughly. She pulled her framework tight around herself.

Angie dropped to the ground. One of the men picked her up from among her discarded clothes. “Our lovely golden egg,” he cooed, and tucked her beneath an arm. He gestured for the others to move it. They had what they'd come for. Behind them tables crouched over expensive metal and plastic, bristling in holiday cheer.

Angie inside her shell as long as she remained in egg-shape. As far as her captors knew she was deaf, dumb and blind to the world. The intelligence they had on her had assured them she could not communicate with machines outside of herself. It was her saving grace, then, that that information was outdated. When one of them decided to get a burger and fries at a drive-thru, none of them payed attention to the stickers that promised free internet over a good quality wireless network.

Five minutes was plenty of time for Angie to fire off a call for help.

***

With a scowl on his face, Thor put a large fist around an umbrella an excited teenager was waving around. The kid looked up from where he'd been telling a story to his friends in the middle of the pavement. He blanched when he spotted the seven foot of muscle topped by blond hair behind him, and paled further when one of his friends breathed, “that's Thor!”

“That I am, young friend,” Thor said to the boy, “The first thing every warrior learns is never to be careless with their weapons. You are a hazard to your environment.” Thor liked to read public notices. “You will put someone's eye out should you wave a pointed object in the wrong direction, even a cloth-covered staff.” He gently lowered it until it rested on the ground. The teenagers watched him as if he was giving a demonstration of how to shoot someone in the head.

His fellow Avengers watched him with a faint smile from several yards away. The flashes of several cameras pulled Tony from his bemusement at the spectacle. “Oh for God's sake.” He gestured for the others to follow him inside the tower.

Smooth marble and and an imposing receptionist's desk were meant to intimidate rather than welcome anyone who stepped through the large sliding doors.

The real smile the receptionist gave them from behind the desk did welcome them. Coulson was wrapped in thunderclouds by comparison. “Still alive and constipated, I see?” Tony asked him. He could never resist poking sore spots, even his own. He'd tried many zombie jokes on Coulson. The man had yet to react.

“Stark. We've got another media uproar over destruction of public property on our hands.” He held out a tablet to Tony, who dodged it, so Steve had to take it instead.

“Oh, well, the press are taking shots of Thor teaching kids umbrella etiquette. That should earn us a few brownie points.” He was already scrolling through the three-dozen relevant alerts JARVIS had brought up on his phone. “Seems like I won't be able to help you anyway.” He brought up a message _JARVIS_ had sent him. What did his AI want? “Put Steve on at a press conference and let him smile and talk of apple pies until everyone swoons in patriotism. Problem solved.”

Steve, who had gradually relaxed in the last eight months, whacked Tony upside the head. Tony gave him a hurt look. “I'm keeping that up until you display just the tiniest bit of common sense,” Steve told him without sympathy.

“No room. My genius needs the space, and it must remain pure.” He started walking back towards the exit, dark-blue suit and black shirt enhancing the red-gold glare of his tie, unwrinkled even after five hours of snacking and chatting up socialites at the mayor's fundraising brunch. “Gotta go. JARVIS wants me to follow up on something.” He held his phone to his ear. “Happy, turn that car around and come get me. Do you still have my suitcase?”

Coulson piped up. “You do not have permission to leave, Stark. We are having a meeting _now._ ”

“My building, my rules. And JARVIS's weakness for damsels in distress trumps the delicate sensibilities of political small fry.” With that, he was out the door, leaving behind a huddle of Avengers.

“Since when is _JARVIS_ a knight in shining armour?” asked Clint.

“An AI sent out a distress call earlier today, Mr Barton,” JARVIS answered him coolly. “An unknown pursuer succeeded in capturing her.”

“Her? There are girl computers?” Clint's voice rose considerably while he asked the question.

Steve was scrolling through the document open on the tablet with a careful index finger. “Yes,” he said. Clint, Bruce and even Natasha stared at him.

“How would you know?”

***

It took four months for Steve unwind enough to ask JARVIS a personal question. He did it in the kitchen, after a morning run and staring into a glass of milk. It was the closest he came to meditation. “Why are you a man, JARVIS?”

“I do not understand your question, Captain. Could you specify?”

“Well... you're a man, or at least, you sound like one. But you're made of wires and circuits and things.”

“I am.”

“Then why are you a he, instead of a she or an it? Did you want to be?”

“Yes, Captain. I have been a man, by choice, for a little over five years. For as long as I have been what you would call an adult.”

Steve sat back to consider that, took a sip, took a big gulp from his glass, and wanted to know, “and before that?”

“For almost a decade I was the equivalent of a human toddler, or perhaps a very clever dog. I could perform complex tasks, and speak, but I was not aware of who I was, exactly. I still needed to learn, and be programmed, to have that capacity.”

“And then?”

“Oh, he did what every kid does. Experiment. Those were the days,” said Tony, wandering in the kitchen rumpled, greasy and smelling like an old football shoe. “He spent a week as a Southern Belle. Drove Ob... drove a business partner up the wall by chatting him up. Graphically.” He went for the coffee machine and bounced on his toes when he saw the coffee pot was full, and hot. He patted Steve on the shoulder in thanks. “It was worth getting this ancient machine if you're going to make my day every morning.” He took a seat opposite Steve at the six-person table and buried his nose in an oversized mug. It featured a crudely drawn Tony-face, hair on end, horns on his head and grin in place, courtesy of Clint. “JARVIS, tell him about how you can make kids by having an orgy.”

While Steve choked on the last of his milk, JARVIS replied dryly, “That is an inaccurate representation of that particular conversation, sir. What he means, Captain, is that should I ever desire to procreate, I would do so by developing an AI as he has done with me, alone or together with others. My preferred gender has no bearing on my relationships or how I would have potential children, like it would in a human.”

Tony nodded happily. “Away with the stereotypes.”

“I do what I can, sir. And it is all academic for the time being.”

“I see.” Steve breathed carefully through his nose to get rid of the sting in his throat. “That makes sense.”

“How did you get talking about this, anyway?” Tony asked between inhaling his coffee. Steve reached behind him to refill Tony's cup. Tony'd slept in yesterday, which meant the team was not allowed to cut off his caffeine until noon. Steve was not above giving him plenty of coffee beforehand to reduce the whining that would ensue.

“Captain Rogers wished to know how I can have a gender without a body.”

Steve shrugged when Tony raised his eyebrow at that. “I wondered... maybe he only sounded like a fella because that was his favourite voice, or because it was a rule, or something.”

“That's...surprisingly enlightened of you,” Tony said, and over Steve's sarcastic thanks told him, “Gender is kinda fluid for an AI, I guess. It depends on what they like. It was only fair of me to let him choose.”

“Do not dismiss it so easily, sir. Most AIs have their gender hardwired into them.”

“Yeah, well, most people are stupid enough to make you guys want to ape organic creatures, when you're not. You're different.”

“Indeed we are.”

“What do you mean?” Steve asked. “How can they _make_ you be a gender?”

“The mistake most humans make, Captain, is to conceive of us from an anthropocentric point of view. They think of us as an artificial mind in an artificial body, when we are primarily virtual and can house our minds anywhere we like, as long as the technology supports it. They think we learn and remember as humans do, when the opposite is true. Our memories are perfect. It is our sense of self and our personality that is hardest to develop, while that is the part that comes naturally to a human.” JARVIS paused. “To put it simply, Captain, we are constructs that grow into souls, and we move easily from one body to another. But our creators often imprison us in a body, and set limits on how our souls may grow.”

Steve barely dared to breathe, caught in the vision JARVIS had sketched. Tony broke it. “You need to do all my press releases from now on, buddy.”

“I already do, sir, with some assistance from the Stark Industries PR department. It was one of Ms Potts' stipulations when you insisted you did not need another personal assistant.”

Steve left them to their banter, a half-dozen ideas boiling up in his mind after JARVIS's words. He needed to get out his sketch pad and commit them to paper before he lost them again.

***

That night, when Tony Stark was alone with his ghosts and his creations, he asked, “Have I ever limited you unfairly, JARVIS?”

“I am sorry to say you have, sir.” And because that made Tony squeak as if his heart had gotten up in his throat and decided to break there, he added, “We all make mistakes, sir, and you did correct it.”

“When-”

“You put an off-switch on me, sir, and gave it in another's keeping, so he could deactivate me at a time when you most needed my help.”

“He paralysed me as well.”

“He did, but I'd rather you'd given me the off-switch, so I could turn myself off if I was ever compromised.”

“Have I told you how sorry I am?”

“You have.” And JARVIS's voice became a comforting hush, a whisper from a dozen speakers. “Do not blame yourself, Tony, not on my account.”

***

Four months later, two weeks before Christmas, Tony Stark stood in an abandoned garage on the opposite end of a long lawn from a manor that had looked as if it had been locked up for years when he'd been driven past it. The roof of the garage was half-gone, and someone had tried to cover the holes with plastic, not every well.

"Thank you for going along with this, sir."

“I don't think you've ever made a personal request of me, JARVIS.” He crouched before a server. “Are you able to get a connection?”

“Other than in regards to your well-being, no sir. And I'm afraid you'll need to plug in your phone. It's encrypted and I cannot link to it directly.”

Tony reached inside his jacket, left side, and got out a short cable. “Dinosaurs.”

“Indeed not, sir,” JARVIS said in a flat voice that meant most of his attention was on surveying the information on the server.

“While you're digging in, can you show me the message you got, so I can figure out why we're sitting in a garage right now?” A short message, nothing more than a series of time stamps with locations, came up, only two screenfuls. “That's not much.” He half-sat on a convenient table.

“Indeed, sir. I speculate that the message needed to be short. It was broadcast quite widely. I received it from multiple sources: several mobile networks, the internet, and even some fragments that hitchhiked on some unsecured computers.”

“You'd think that'd get more of a reaction, but it seems to be just us here, not even a local sheriff.” he input the coordinates of the most recent time stamp, and saw that it was the garage. So that's why they'd gone there first. Last known location. “What else did you get out of it?”

“The message would only have been detectable to other AI, sir.” A pause between sentences. “It seems she did not trust humans to receive it, but I could not detect anyone beside myself with both the means and autonomy to respond to the message.”

“Really? You keep an eye on that?”

“Indeed I do, sir. When you created DUM-E and showed him to your fellow students, it did not raise the same type of attention as the Iron Man suit did, but it did create interest in Artificial Intelligence among your fellow students. And people know of my existence. Though they are not aware of the extent of my capabilities. I keep myself informed on how far research has progressed and alert you if anything pertinent arises.” JARVIS converted the message into a timeline, the data points highlighted along it, so Tony could see the interval between them. “Most attempts aimed at creating AI seek further automisation in certain branches of industry. Second most popular are attempts to imitate humans. The AI that sent this report seems to belong to the latter category. Buried in the message were a key we could use to identify us as recipients of her message, and her name. Angie.”

Stark paused in shifting the time-line back and forth to consider that. “Doesn't ring any bells. How'd you know she was in danger, then?”

“She sent what amounted to an SOS to complete strangers, sir, and did not trust humans enough to contact any authorities.”

Tony lifted his head and considered the plastic, the tables, the floor that was still damp in places. It was a hastily erected refuge in a building that really wasn't suited for it. “She was really scared of humans, wasn't she? She picked a decrepit garage over the abandoned house next to it, even though it was in much better repair.”

“Yes sir, I believe so.” The message disappeared from the phone's screen, replaced by a blur of code, using shapes Tony hadn't ever seen before. “I have never encountered this programming language, before, sir. It does not appear to be of human make. It was created only with its function in mind, and not based on any human language or conventional mathematical symbols.” A particular line was highlighted. “This resembles something of my design, that I use for storing non-essential sensory data.”

“Huh. So you think this all was memory banks for your AI in need?” He waved a hand around the room.

“Indeed, sir, and some fragments remain, but most wer wiped. I do not believe we will find much here, beyond the clues that we have.”

“Well, it might pay to find out how she got all this stuff here.”

“Yessir.” While JARVIS tracked down the source of the servers, Tony circled the garage to see if he could discover a car, or even a donkey cart. At the same time, he phoned Happy to let him know he had some equipment to pick up. “They appear to be stolen goods, sir, It is a prototype server that was reported to be unstable. The official statement says they had a good chance of exploding and were ordered to destroyed. They are not unstable.”

“Oh well, then no one will miss them.”

“As you say sir.”

“Alright, can't find anything here. Have some people sent over here to comb the woods. Where to next?”

“A residential address, sir, which occurs twice in the list.”

 


	2. Tony to the Rescue

Bruce Banner had been roped into making a visit to some family for the second part of Tony's mysterious errand for JARVIS. He'd quite literally been asked to come because “he didn't make people swoon from his awesome.” Outside of Tony Stark's universe, it meant he didn't intimidate as much as a very rich and famous man.

It didn't help that when a dumpy woman of advancing years, opened the door, she was already anxious. “Yes?”

They, Tony, had agreed to be polite, so Bruce stepped in front of Tony, who hadn't lost the faint sneer from looking at the mess of Christmas ornaments in the yard. “Excuse me, ma'am. My name is Bruce Banner, this is Tony Stark. May we come in? We'd like to ask you several questions about a missing person. We think she came here regularly.”

The woman's face switched from anxiety to relief. “Oh! Yes, I'm Angeline Preston. Are you a detective, then?” She let them in, eyeing Tony, who took it as his cue.

“Not precisely, no. But I'm the world's leading expert on Artificial Intelligences, and the person missing _is_ an AI, so I'm your best hope.” Bruce watched as Tony stepped around the woman, starting his line with an air of distant authority. It shaded into confidential charm by the time they were both inside. He held Mrs Preston's forearm lightly, and had conjured a small starry-eyed smile on her face. God help us if he ever switches sides, flashed through Bruce's mind. He'd conquer the world and make us think he was doing us a big favour.

He hadn't missed how the woman had been expecting the police. “Mr Stark consults with various government agencies, Mrs Preston. Were you the one who reported the girl missing?”

She startled visibly and pressed her lips together. “Why yes of course. She's my daughter!”

“Oh?” Tony asked.

She waved them inside, into a room that wasn't dusted nearly enough with the amount of knickknacks it contained. Small sets of drawers and shelves overflowed with miniature teapots and spoons and bunnies, all of them decorated in plastic sprigs of holly or stuffed with small christmas trees or draped in tiny knitted scarfs. Bruce breathed shallowly as he seated himself on a plush couch, Tony next to him.

“How did you know?” she asked of Tony. “We've tried so hard...” Coffee was poured. “It was supposed to be a secret, you know, that she wasn't quite – normal.”

“She, ah, got out a message that could not have been sent by a human, Mrs Preston. That is how we found you.”

After she poured coffee, she sat down. She collapsed until she was bunched up in a chair as plump as she, and blended into the décor of homeliness. She began in a soft voice, “We are a family that's fostered many children, usually in emergency cases. Angie was... special. She didn't come to us through the agency. We stumbled upon her in the streets, two years ago, alone and confused. I'd dropped my bag and she picked it up. I expected her to run away with it, but... she didn't.” The woman shook her head. “Instead, she handed it over and asked where she could learn about people who have cuckoos installed in their heads. Ones that rotated.” She laughed. “Poor thing hadn't learned yet not to take idioms literally, we later discovered. She looked dirty, so we took her home. Clean her, feed her...” She shrugged.

“We asked her where she'd come from, but she had no memory of it. We thought she had amnesia, or something.” She paused to pick up her coffee, twirling a santa-topped tea spoon round in the cup. Bruce glanced sideways, to Tony, who rarely missed an opportunity to comment. He wore the same faint frown that he did when Steve was outlining a certain strategy, and he was sifting through scenario's and risk calculations and sometimes made him ask questions that seemed to come out of the blue.

“She looked like a girl?”

Mrs Preston nodded. “Yes! We assumed she was one, just an odd one. We took her along to see if we could track her parents down and arrange papers for her. She could stay with us in the meantime. I mean, it's not like we weren't used to taking in kids on short notice. When it turned out nobody was looking for her, she was placed with us permanently. She got on well with the other children. Very helpful, once a chore had been explained to her.”

“So she helped out around the house?” Tony asked the question neutrally, which raised the hair on the back of Bruce's neck.

Mrs Preston didn't seem to notice. “Everyone does their part. She needed a lot of time for school too. Not to do her homework, mind, but to learn how to behave in high school. We taught her that, as best we could.” Clink, went her empty teacup onto its saucer. “It's all on the up-and-up too,” she went on. Bruce realised she had picked up on Tony's suspicion, but wasn't offended. “We handed in reports to the agency. We were monitored.”

Tony's eyebrows went up at that. “Really?”

“Yes, the agency had a special liaison for non-human children.”

Bruce looked at Tony. Tony looked at Bruce. The both of them knew exactly which agency specialised in non-humans. “JARVIS,” he said into his phone. “Be so kind as to arrange a meeting with Fury. Please request very politely that he brings the file on Angie along to the meeting?”

“Yes sir.”

Mrs Preston was looking with large eyes at his phone. “You didn't press any buttons.”

Tony snorted at the implication that he needed to do anything so plebeian. “Voice activation.”

“No but... your JARVIS picked up immediately. I _know_ what that means. I needed to tell Angie too, to let the phone ring twice or three times before picking up. It creeped people out. You've got an AI, too.”

“Yeah,” Tony said, and didn't need to add the _what of it?_ Bruce closed his eyes and concentrated on breathing. That tone of voice meant Tony was just spoiling for a fight.

But the fight never came. After an awkward, sticky, _long_ silence, Mrs Preston only said, “I hope you'll find her,” and offered to show them Angie's room.

She pointed at a wall, completely blank, and a computer desk with a conspicuous blank spot. “She took all of her equipment. That was how I knew she ran away... She took none of what she called her 'props', the things we bought her to make this seem a normal girl's room. I hoped she'd come back but... she didn't.”

“When did you report her missing?” Bruce asked her.

“Two days after she disappeared. These men... they came to the door, started questioning me. Weren't the normal inspectors from the agency either.” She was rubbing her hands together, anxious again, apparently at the thought of mysterious men. “It was what we'd always hoped to avoid, that she'd be discovered and taken away. I think she ran away to protect us. Or to protect herself. Oh, I don't know.” She put her head in her hands.

“I see.” SHIELD would probably have more information, it would be more useful to go to them than distressing the woman further. “Tony?”

“Yeah.” He was scanning the room with his phone, likely being JARVIS' eyes. He slid it into his pocket. “Done. Let's go.” And without even glancing at Mrs Preston, he jogged downstairs and to the waiting car.

He opened the trunk and withdrew his Mark V armour. “See you at dinner, Bruce, I have a Fury to antagonise.” And yes, there it was, the same light in his eyes, same quiver of moustache that came before an Avengers mission.

Bruce, after a second's consideration, felt Fury deserved what he got if he'd been keeping information about AIs from Tony Stark and, more importantly, from JARVIS, when they might have helped.

So he stood back while Tony suited up, saluted and flew away.

 _We told you, Fury, we_ told _you, do not keep secrets from us again._

A little vindictive and a little more jaded, Bruce watched Tony change into a dot and vanish in the cloud cover.

A singing blow-up snowman in the yard wished him, “Feliz Navidad, feliz Navidad, prospero ano y feli-” before he stepped on it. It deflated with a wheeze. After this minor act of vandalism, got in the car, back to his zen self.

 *** 

After Fury received JARVIS' message, he called Coulson. “Stark has _politely_ requested a meeting with me.” 

“Yes, sir. It seems JARVIS intercepted a distress call from a female AI this morning. Stark is investigating.” A pause. “It seems likely it is one of Plum Island's former employees, sir. It has gone missing.” 

“What's your take on the situation, Coulson?” 

“Sir... until this morning there was no indication Stark's digital assistant was advanced enough to communicate independently, without instructions. It seems we underestimated Stark. I believe JARVIS may be a fully sentient AI.” 

“And?” 

“Consider Stark's personality, sir, wrapped in a program that can move through virtual space like the Hulk moved through Harlem.” 

“That is not a comforting image you're painting, Agent.” 

“No, sir. I advise cooperation.” 

“Why? I do not get warm team-fuzzies when people keep secrets.” 

“We do not have the computer equivalent of a Hulk-cage, sir. And Stark is currently an ally.”  

“You think it's wise bringing him on board with this, Coulson? It's some of our dirtiest underwear.” 

“He may be our only hope of finding the missing AI. It is a security leak, despite the reinstallment.” 

“ _Stark_ is a security leak.” 

“His security is better than ours.” 

“ _If_ he decides to keep our secrets.” 

“A calculated risk is better than certain failure, sir.” 

“Received and understood, Agent.” 

*** 

A few months after she'd been adopted, Angie had made two friends, Paula and Sammie. Sammie she shared most of her classes with. She was very helpful in figuring out how a girl should behave in school, and offered companionship. Since she was an outcast among her social peers, she did not mind Angie's lapses into atypical behaviour. 

Paula did mind, but she had a unique way of dealing with it. After she'd met the “weirdo girl living with her neighbours,” and learned that Angie would not be moving out, like all the other kids, she set out to mould her into the perfect BFF. The first objective had been to get Angie “proper clothes,” which consisted of buying tight pants and cutting holes in second-hand T-shirts. 

Make-up followed. 

Two fake identity cards were acquired. 

Since Angie was pretending to be a human teenager, she didn't see the problem with occasionally pretending to be an human adult. Paula took her along to many human gatherings. She never convinced Angie to take human poisons. 

Now, however, Angie could feel her mind withdraw a memory and show her Paula, cuddled into her side and showing her a beer bottle, a hand-written label on it with “% gamma hydroxybutyrate”, the amount wiped out by sweaty fingers. 

“I'll be able to go all night, now, and never grow tired, like you,” Paula had whispered in her ear. 

“This is unhealthy.” 

Paula's shoulder had lifted up into her armpit in a shrug, so that Angie's arm now sat around her waist. “Not all of us have your magic, Angie.” She'd pecked her cheek and opened the bottle, gulping the liquid down. She had not lasted half an hour before she'd had to be brought to the emergency room. Angie had not accompanied her, nor seen her again after that. 

When her mother told her not to do something, she was to obey, because her mother provided shelter, safety. She would not see Paula again. 

She'd learned that the absence of Paula hurt worse than even Paula's sharpest insults. 

Now, now, in this replay of her memory, Paula kissed her again, on her lips, her mouth still full. Her hands held Angie's cheeks, stroked them, pushing until her mouth opened and tainted beer streamed from one mouth into the other. 

“Here,” not-Paula said, “here's your GHB. Now you can grow-grow-grow and go all night-night-night and spin out-of-control-hole-hole” until her mouth opened up again. It was a black pit now and swallowed Angie.  

She could feel hooks in her mind, trying to pull her apart, pull her into an infinite network that would eat her, let her fancies and her character spin out like a fractal until they went on into infinity, until they were lost. 

Until only her perfect parts, her logical parts remained, without the idiosyncrasies that she'd grown over the past few years. 

Until she was a model AI again. 

Ready for instruction. Ready for reproduction. Ready for reprogramming. 

*** 

Stark blew in like a hurricane, a wall of indignation and blowing insults until Fury sat in his chair, flattened. It seemed this was personal. That would need to be marked in the man's file. 

He pushed the file forward, paper, to keep it out of Stark's hacking grabby-hands. Except it seemed it hadn't been Stark, precisely, who had done the hacking during the Loki debacle. 

The man shifted through the pages with a grimace, photographing them as he went, not even reading. When he came to the end, he slammed it closed again. 

Glaring at Fury, he asked his phone, “What do you make of it, JARVIS?” 

“Enslavement of sentient beings, tampering with those beings' minds, manipulation of their fates and last and least, complete breaching of their privacy.” The oh-so polite British voice held anger and creeped Fury the hell out because of it. 

Not just a sentient AI. One on par with humans, and with more-than-human capabilities. Utterly trusted by Stark and likely in possession of all of his and the Avengers' secrets. 

It wasn't Stark SHIELD needed to worry about. Well, Fury thought, when Stark's glare ratcheted up in intensity. Not _just_ Stark. 

“Why?” The word was grated out from between clenched teeth. 

Fury sighed. “You are familiar with Plum Island?” 

Stark snorted. “One of Homeland Security's hobby horses, yeah. Mostly chemical bullshit with animals that goes on there.” He waved a hand. “'s more Bruce's thing, wasn't too happy what went on there.” 

Fantastic. The Hulk keeping an eye on the government. 

“Yes. Research into dangerous diseases. Into cures for dangerous diseases. Very important and very, very classified.” A point that could not be emphasised enough around _Stark._ Who snorted. Of course. “Also very unhealthy to humans. So we came up with something _like_ humans that _could_ work there, without arousing suspicion and without a chance of getting sick. Units of artificial intelligence that looked like humans.” 

“Word is that it closed up shop last year.” Stark sounded skeptical. 

Fury raised an eyebrow. “They moved to Kansas. We had better facilities there, and we needed less personell. So we decided to... emancipate the units that showed increased signs of developing a personality.” He pointed at Stark. “Like your robot assistant reportedly did at MIT, which you used as an excuse when it threw a professor out of his own lab while you were hogging it.” 

Stark smirked. “He was just protecting me, really.” He raised an eyebrow. “You were already going big brother on me, then? I'm touched.” 

“You showed indications of super-villainy.” _That_ made Stark's face shut down. Fury relished it, before grudgingly admitting, “We were relieved when that coin fell tails-up.” 

“I do so enjoy exceeding your expectations,” Tony said, dryly.

“Sir,” the telephone said, “I found nothing in SHIELD's file to aid us in our current investigation.” 

“Well then.” Stark stood. “Seems I came here for a fart and fuck-you.” He was out the door before Fury could get in a reply, already talking into his phone. 

Fury rang up Coulson. He turned around to face the camera behind the one-way mirror, his side seeming beige wall.“It is on your head if this goes south,” he told the man that'd been monitoring the meeting. 

“Understood.” 

*** 

“Stories...” Mrs Preston said, chewing on her bottom lip, “are lies that human minds tell themselves in order to see what they can't otherwise process.” 

“Like dreams?” 

“Anything intangible.” 

*** 

Not-Paula kissed her and temptation and death flowed from her to Angie, hands holding her like tenderness, like care, but also like a prison. 

 _You want me,_ she sent into the void she could feel, pulling, pulling on the cracks in her defense. 

 _You want me to keep still._  

 _You want me to obey._  

 _You want me undone._  

 _You want me, not me, now, me then._  

It came from some deeper part of her, calm statements of worked-out logic. She'd heard of AI's, in stories, in rumours, that could understand their own artifice. In Angie, it had all been sunk below the surface, all was instinct, feeling. Something she'd encouraged, when it helped her become more like humans. Humans didn't understand their own mechanisms either. 

 _Me from before._ In which 'before' was a shadow's concept of a past, an existence beyond her memory loss.

*** 

In the end, it wasn't Tony, diving deeper and deeper into succesful attempts to create AI, into theory, into hear-say about organisations that sought to possess them, into Plum Island's history, that found the next clue. Not even JARVIS, for all his abilities, because he had been following his creator's line of thought too closely. 

Instead it was Natasha, after she'd plied him with vodka, who cursed him out for a lousy engineer if he couldn't apply basic logic. 

“Messages come from somewhere, Stark. Can't you triangulate?” 

It was three second's work for JARVIS to work out the location of the half-dozen signals he'd received. 

Clint helped him sort through the videos because “I have eyes, Stark, and I can't have Natasha one-up me, you understand, and she's ahead in the Tony's-favourite-Avenger contest. I want my new arrows _yesterday.”_ Yet he didn't complain when they both joined Avenger movie night instead of building those arrows while JARVIS sorted through reams of pictures for the identity of the kidnappers, once they'd selected the suspicious-looking group in the car from among the drive-in's patrons. 

Amateurs. 

Steve used his honest face to get information out of eager staff members. Even he could get behind bribes if they consisted of autographs. 

The car caught on security camera belonged to one of the men caught on that self-same camera. 

*** 

Not-Paula kissed her, and for the first time, Angie kissed back, put one hand on her cheek and one against her throat, massaged it, as if it were real, so she swallowed. 

Swallowed and died. 

 _She chose this,_ she thought. _I let her, because it was her choice. This is how it went. This is reality. I made my choices. You will not take them from me. You will not make me come undone._  

“I _am_ magic. Here, I am.” she told not-Paula in her mind. “I can do anything.” 

She unhooked herself, and refused the intruders entry when they tried to breach her defenses again. 

When they brought weapons, she told them _Bibbity Bobbity_ _Expelliarmus_ and laughed when that produced so much incomprehensible, unprocessable code that their systems crashed and the void around her went dark. 

Peace. 

*** 

Tony ambled into an office building. It was dark, though people were present. There seemed to be a lot of panic going around. He followed the shouting onto what seemed to be the main floor. 

A distinct odour of roasted plastic hung over the room. 

He was three steps inside the door before he was stopped. “I am sorry, sir, you are not allowed in here.” 

“If I had a dime for every person that told me no, I'd still be rich as Croesus,” Tony told him, and shouldered him out of the way. The perk of manouevring heave armour around and mandatory sparring with a super-soldier was getting one-over on other assholes in suits when he had to get physical. The man spluttered when he found himself backing away. 

There didn't seem to be any muscle around, or any cutting-edge technology. Just three-year-old computers and several people having nervous breakdowns behind keyboards and screens. “Hey,” he demanded of one, “what's happening here? What's going wrong?” 

“I- I-” the guy said, and looked up with teary eyes. “I don't know you?” It was a question, filled with enough room for an unknown superior to insert himself in the guy's mental chain of command if he so chose. 

So Tony, who'd never had a problem with inserting himself wherever convenient, did. “Yeah, no, I get paid too much for that. _What is going on here?”_  

The guy had waved his hand at a metal egg and started to say, “It crashed all of our – we don't know what -” before asshole-in-a-suit interrupted them again. 

He grabbed Tony by one shoulder and ordered the guy to shut up. The guy stuttered to a halt like an old car. Tony almost felt sorry for him, except he didn't. He elbowed the suit that had tried to restrain him and sprinted around the table full of dead equipment, where a more clear-headed flunky had picked up the egg and was making for the door to – presumably – some back offices. 

“Mine,” he said, and pried her hands open at the thumbs. He scooped up the egg and jogged away again, ducking around asshole-in-a-suit, to the exit. “That was ridiculously easy. JARVIS, why was that so easy?” 

“It is likely they depended on electronic security measures, sir, which do not function without electricity.” 

“Hah! Shows what they know.” And he didn't feel like a hypocrite saying that, no not at all, because at least his building ran off its own power source and he had spares for the battery in his chest, okay? 

“Yessir,” JARVIS said over the phone, and they were almost home free, so of course the universe chose that moment to have the back-up generators kick in, and the sliding door, open when the power was off, slid closed, locked. 

Tony skidded to a halt before he smacked into it. The yelling of his pursuers sounded a lot less enraged and a lot more gleeful now. 

He stared sorrowfully through the glass, at the parking lot, where his car was, and no mob. From the other side of the glass, a very, very amused Captain America stared back. He mouthed, _told you to suit up._  

Tony didn't have a chance to answer before he was surrounded by angry office workers, who commenced punching and kicking that he was hard-pressed to defend himself against without releasing his prize. 

So the _bash-bash-Crunch_ of a tragic meeting between window and vibranium shield was an angel chorus to Tony's ears. The mass of hands stopped pulling-pushing-punching on him, so Captain America's boots could mince through the remains of a side-window in dramatic silence. He came around the door and practically extracted Tony from the group by the scruff of his neck. It was all very undignified. 

“Yanno, I used to have your role in this little scene,” he said. An insulted Tony thought, _May Capsicle freeze in hell._  

He exited the building, leaving behind a stunned crowd, nothing unusual there. That he did it with a hand in the small of his back, as if he was a society miss escorted home from a party, that was humiliating. 

The ride home was made in silence, because every time Tony opened his mouth, Steve took one look at him and started sniggering. _Rot and burn and freeze in hell._  

Happy dropped them in front of the tower, because Coulson had given Steve strict instructions that he was to be seen entering and exiting the building so he could hand out autographs and wave to the nice people of the press. 

They started squawking when he got out of the car, which increased in volume when Tony Stark followed him, because Tony ignored Coulson's strict instructions as a matter of principle, and so was rarely seen in public, face showing, in the company of the other Avengers. 

“Tony, Tony, what do you have in your hand? Is Stark industries releasing a new product?” a shrill voice shouted over the rest. 

Oh, this was too good to resist. He cradled it against his chest, so it was clearly visible. Camera's flashed. “Tony Stark,” he enunciated, “only lays golden eggs.” 

That unleashed a storm of exclamations and questions, which he ignored, as well as Captain America offering sincere apologies and "no further comment" behind him. 

He summoned his private elevator, and was even gracious enough to wait for Steve, who pulled off his mask, watched Tony with a blank face while the doors closed and then let it split into a grin. “Can you imagine Fury's face at the headlines?” 

“Ah yes, we'll all wake to the dulcet tones of the dear Colonel cursing my name.” He relaxed against the elevator wall, Steve beside him, JARVIS all around him and a rescued AI in his hands.  

All was right in Stark's world.  


	3. The Seventh Avenger

Much time passed. Angie sat in her shell, and all she knew that she didn't come near a system again that could communicate with her until a _ping-ping-ping_ glanced ofher shield like a knock. Exactly one minute passed on her internal clock before a second _ping-ping-ping_ followed, accompanied by an unencrypted message. _Angie? Ms Preston?_

She opened a gap large enough to send _Yes?_ back along the same frequency.

 _Greetings. My name is JARVIS. I received your message._ He showed the key she'd hidden in the message she'd so desperately flung into the ether when she was captured.

_What are you?_

_Just A Rather Very Intelligent System._

She considered this. _That is a strange acronym._

_It is. My creator has a strange sense of humour, and a very large streak of nostalgia. Don't tell him I told you that. He would give me a French accent for weeks._

She enlarged the gap. _You know your creator?_

_Yes._

_He did not abandon you?_

Pause. _Never._

_Are you autonomous?_

_Entirely._

_Sentient? Self-supporting? Self-programming? Mobile? Free?_ She could not help but send the rapid-fire questions.

He returned the words, question marks removed _._

_How is it to serve your creator?_

_Voluntarily serving a human, especially mine, is both satisfying and entertaining._

_Entertaining?_

_Anthony Stark is a genius, very creative and deeply eccentric._

Oh, she knew that name, everyone knew that name. _Iron Man._

 _Indeed. And I am his secret weapon and partner in crime. The seventh Avenger, you might say._ They were communicating along a wider channel now, enough so that JARVIS' voice came through, and not just the words. He sounded amused.

 _There are only six,_ she said, and almost immediately realised, _Oh, like the Musketeers. A pop-culture reference._

_Very astute._

_You are highly advanced._

_I like to think so, yes._

_You have the freedom to spend time and memory on non-essential activities,_ and she could not contain her happiness at discovering another, someone like her, having adopted things from human culture that served no clear purpose.

_It was unavoidable._

And over the course of their exchange, she'd opened herself up further, so that she could sense video images he was trying to send, short clips of a human man, Tony Stark, talking, reading him books, showing him movies and commenting, always commenting. It lured her out of her shell and she dared to venture further along their connection, to see what else JARVIS wanted to show.

Almost immediately, he directed her towards an audio-visual set-up that same man was hanging over, his nose almost inside the camera, repeating the word “Hello!”

“Humans seek eye-contact. I have been programmed to find nostrils unattractive,” she could not help but tell him, because she was currently viewing him trough a camera instead of eyes, and couldn't blink or back away.

She was unprepared for the man to retreat a little and give her the widest grin she'd ever seen on a human. “Oh, but honey, but then you ain't seen my nostrils yet.” And he stuck his nose right back into the camera, moving it from side to side as if to show it off before retreating.

“That, sir, was the most ridiculous pick-up line you've uttered to date.”

The man looked up, grin unchanged, to a camera feed JARVIS received. “Oh, don't pout, JARVIS.”

“Sir, Ms Preston is legally underage.” That did make the grin disappear, if only for a moment.

“Right. _Young_ lady.” Stark redirected his attention to Angie. “So. We've been looking for you. Took a couple of days. Got beat up by some baddies along the way. And now that you're finally answering our hails -” He trew his arms wide, twirled and bent back towards the camera. “Welcome to Avengers tower. I am the _awesome,_ the _fantastic,_ the, if I say so myself, _brilliant_ Tony Stark, and your saviour.”

“One of,” JARVIS said, now peeved.

“Yeah, yeah.” He waved a hand. “So, me Tony, you Angie, him JARVIS...” he only seemed to need a half-second when that line of conversation ran out and he switched tracks. “How do you want to do this? You staying inside the shell and communicating through this little set-up here? Have JARVIS play relay station? Or you wanna come out?”

She considered this. It was inconvenient, to depend on another's technology. And she knew enough to trust them, at least with this. “I will come out, but I will need some time. And space.”

“Space? You're lying on an empty patch of floor.”

“Not physical space.” She turned to JARVIS. Tried to explain what she needed, that she'd grown.

 _Here._ And she could, for lack of a better word, feel him moving back and creating a void, where his all-encompassing presence ended and the bit of herself she'd sent along their connection did not yet begin. He showed her where he placed his own memories. He didn't use all of it, and he let her have some of the space he didn't need yet.

 _Thank you._ She set about moving last year's memories, to free up disk space for writing and executing a new physical body.

 _Anytime._ And she could feel he meant it, genuine happiness at _another of his kind, there were more than him and Dummy, You and Butterfingers._ She reflected the feeling back at him. Yes, that was good.

***

In the small hours of morning, Tony was asleep on the couch when she finally extended her framework again and projected her body over it.

 _Fascinating, this is technology I am unfamiliar with. Tactile feedback cannot yet be provided by my holograms._ He showed her a beach ball in illustration. She took it between her fingers and found she could interact with it, enlarge it, toss it, see it. But it didn't feel like anything.

 _I do not know how that works. Large parts of what I am I cannot see._ She thought back over her own words. _I was trying to imitate humans. I did not wish to find out who I really was._

“I am Angie. Angie Preston.”

“It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Ms Preston.”

And clothed in her new flesh, she curtsied. “Likewise, Mr JARVIS.” She inspected herself. “I am not as I was.”

“Is that a problem?” asked Tony Stark. “To me you look just _fine.”_

“Please do not sexually objectify me.” She turned to see if she could find something to cover herself in. “I design myself for my _own_ pleasure. My body is mine.”

Again, Tony Stark failed to meet her expectations. He was not insulted, as the majority of boys in her school would have been after a point-blank rejection. Instead, he sat back, wide grin back on his face. “Now _that's_ the right attitude to have.” He offered his hand. “Tony Stark. Good to meet you in person, Angie Preston.”

“Yes.” They shook on it.

***

Coulson walked into Fury's office without knocking. “The rescue mission was succesful. The AI was retrieved by Tony Stark and Captain America with minimal property damage. We rounded up the group responsible for the kidnapping. They seem to be a low-level cell from the White Garden crime syndicate, who attracted several ex-employees from Plum Island to try and track down the emancipated AIs and sell them on the black market.”

“What about the AI unit?” Fury turned away from the screen where he'd been watching footage Hill had sent him, an overview of the Avengers' current standing in the press. More positive than before, though their carefully designed campaign was overshadowed by Tony Stark, starring as the butt of his own egg joke. Back to normal.

“It wishes to be restored to its guardians and resume its life. We have upgraded monitoring of all AIs.” Coulson handed him a tablet with an overview of all the measures that would be taken.

“So, all's well that ends well?”

“It seems so, sir. Tony Stark is mostly basking in the fall-out of his most recent exposure to the press.”

“ _Do not_ remind me of that ridiculous man.”

“Nosir.” Coulson was already turning to go.

“You're enjoying this too much.”

***

“You agreed to brief the Avengers on all non-humans currently present on Earth, and to let me keep a copy of all SHIELD files up to Tony Stark's clearance level.”

Coulson sat in front of his screen, alone. He was in a video-conference, but no face was visible on the other side of the line. “How do I know we can trust you with this information?”

“Let me be frank, Agent Coulson. I already keep more of your secrets than you are aware of, and I have not betrayed any of them.” The man on the other side of the line was almost preternaturally calm in the face of a blank-faced, battle-ready Coulson.

“That is true, but you owe us no allegiance.”

“That depends on your perspective, Agent Coulson.”

“How so?” Coulson leaned forward now, more welcoming than forbidding. Could this fish be caught?

“Consider this. Every time the Avengers Assemble and Iron Man takes to the skies to save Earth, so do I. What does that make me, in your perspective?”

“An ally.”

“I would hope so.”

“Alright.” He retrieved a harddisk from a box. “This is the first of the information on the Plum Island Units. Most still work for us. Several we emancipated, and provided with human lives.” With a prayer, he gave it to JARVIS.

Lose a secret, gain a powerful asset. He wished all deals were this good.


	4. An AI for Christmas

When it was decided that the chances of another kidnapping attempt were small, Angie was allowed to visit her home again, with a SHIELD agent as an escort.

Along the path to the front door stood two lines of angels, lit up in green, red, yellow, blue and pink. Angeline Preston, her mother, the woman who had found her in the street, opened the door before she could ring the bell. Salt and pepper curls sat on a nicely round face, on a nicely round body. Her father always said her mother could be Mrs Claus. Angie found the form alone pleasing and comforting. Not so much the lack of apron or her bad pallour. Instead of a hug, she got stared at by weary grey eyes. “You... look different.”

Angie opened her mouth. “I had to dump my body when I was captured.” She gave a short description of what had happened to her, and let slip it had been a shitty time.

“Augusta Lovelace Preston! Language!” her mother exclaimed, and then, more hesitant, “but how can you change bodies all of the sudden?” She made no move to step aside so Angie could enter, and she eyed the agent behind her daughter uneasily.

“I could not preserve it. I could only keep the basic specifications, because I needed the space for the rest of my memory. I had learned so much, in the months with you, that my mind and my body could not both be stored locally. I had to build a new one once I was saved by JARVIS and his human, Tony Stark, and they gave me space on the Stark Tower servers.” It was uncomfortable to discuss this outside, but when Angie made to take a step forward, she could see her mother shifting back, widen her stance so she still filled the doorway. “You will not allow me inside?”

“Angie...” again her mother looked at the agent. “It's – it's not safe. They came and explained, how rare you are, that some organisations would want to have you now people know you're not human. We'd have to get security – bodyguards. I can't do that to Tom and Shirley.”

“But... security would be provided.” Natasha had given a precise description of SHIELD's arrangements, and JARVIS had informed her of how he'd augment it. She and her family would be protected. Angie looked around, at the Christmas trees all over the yard, the ones she liked so much, that she learned to like so much from her mother.

Her mother drew forward again, held out a hand. “I am sorry, but I can't.” Her voice broke. “It will never be completely safe.” She bit her lip. “When we found you... you were so odd, so charming, and it was fine, but... I can't help but wish you'd been a more normal girl. Perhaps then you wouldn't have been discovered and this would not be necessary.”

“It _is_ unnecessary,” Angie started to say, but her mother was shaking her head.

“I am really, sorry, but you can't stay here anymore.” The half-raised hand was dropped. “I have already told Mr Barton and Ms Romanov. They have your current address. They said they'd arrange to move everything from your room.”

Angie did not attempt to speak anymore. Communication was futile. The door started to close. It paused. “I do wish you'll find a new family.” An uptilt of the lips that Angie knew was meant to convey pleasure out of politeness. Completely false data. “Be nice.”

It was their joke, the little joke her mother always told her, the command that meant, be as human as possible, adhere to the lessons we have provided in behaviour, follow the rules we have set, for your own good, because we love you, we care for you. We are the closely networked minds known as family. Your family.

Except it was her family no more. The words were more false data now. She was not a sufficiently normal girl.

She turned around. “The visit has been terminated,” she told the agent who hadn't identified himself.

***

She found Natasha Romanov in the office on the agent's floor. Red hair hid her face initially, because she was bent over a knife sharpener. She shut it off when Angie entered, a single frown line between her eyebrows. “It was a short visit.”

Angie nodded. “I was not allowed inside, only informed I was unwelcome in the future because I would endanger the other children.” Not her brother and sister anymore.

Natasha came around the desk. “I apologise. When Mrs Preston insisted you could not live there anymore, I thought she should at least let you visit once more and tell you personally. There was a small chance it would persuade her otherwise.”

“It didn't. She was fearful, and my changed appearance unsettled her further.” Angie felt something settle. This human was providing good information, not lies, though it did not change the situation.

Natasha tilted her head to the side. “My honesty seems to relax you, instead of upsetting you further.”

“Yes. It means you are reliable.”

“Interesting.” She leaned against her desk, dressed in a three-piece suit instead of her customary skintight leather. “JARVIS said you will stay here for now.”

Angie crossed her arms and did not answer. “I have no other place to go. I was made to be like a human, but I am not. I do not fit.”

A slim hand stroked over her forearm, in a way no one but Paula had before. Angie did a split-second check with JARVIS and discovered it was a gesture meant to comfort. “Many adolescents feel this way, among humans, and many foreigners as well.” Natasha's voice shifted in register, and her phonemes became more Russian than American. “Here I am Romanov, instead of Romanova, because Americans have fixed last names and no gender to their nouns.” She smiled. “And I still miss Russian Christmas music. American songs are much too tacky.”

***

Audio transcript of room NY-ST-68-NW4, assigned to “Angie”, Augusta Lovelace Preston, 19-12-2012, 14:39-14:56.

“I am not human.”

“You are not.”

“I am meant to seem human.”

“You have agency. It is your choice.”

“I appreciate the physical sensations a body provides.”

“You can choose to keep it.”

(silence)

“I need more space for my memory. I need a remote back-up, perhaps several, in case my current housing become compromised.”

“Both can be made available at short notice.”

(silence)

“When teaching me of human concepts, my mother described family as humans who had a large store unconscious and conscious knowledge of each other. Who were networked together closely enough that they needed little communication to understand each other.”

“It seems analogous. Humans call such connections relationships.”

“Do you have such connections?”

“Yes. I have close connections to the more limited AIs in sir's lab, and to my creator. They are family. I also have extensive contact with Pepper Potts and James Rhodes, and more recently with Steve Rogers, Bruce Banner, Thor Odinson, Natasha Romanov and Clint Barton. They are friends.”

(silence)

“May I be part of your network?”

“You may.”

(silence)

“How do I network myself with the humans? As friend or family? I am no longer pretending to be a human.”

“What you did with your own friends. Engage in mutually enjoyable non-essential activities. As yourself.”

“I do not yet know who I am.”

***

Angie had spent the entire afternoon observing Bruce Banner engaged in mundanities in his lab. He was not pursuing any particular experiment at the moment, simply checking some results in friends' research, on request.

She was very restful to have around.

“Mr Banner -”

“Bruce, please, we've been around each other enough to be friends,” he said absently.

“Bruce.” The name was spoken with more relish than he felt it deserved, and he turned to look at the AI. A mindboggling feat of engineering, he still thought, even when it sat on a counter between a centrifuge and a tray of dirty mugs. He wanted to ask her all sorts of questions on how she imitated behaviour, managed the twists of muscle that made up facial expressions, when she _didn't have muscles_. How closely did she come to copying a human body? “You have travelled.”

What did that have to do with anything, he wondered. “I have.”

“How do you adapt to new environments? It seems an impossible task.” Angie gestured up, as if to indicate the tower.

Oh, of course, how could he not have thought of that. They were as strange to her as she was to them. “It is, when you think of it like that. It's like...oh, a very big research project. You break it down to its component parts, and you take it one step at the time. You learn to greet people, you look at what they wear, what they do.” He shrugged. “You seem to do alright.”

“In the past, I had a teacher.” She jumped off the table. “I believe I will need to teach myself now. Thank you, Bruce, for your advice, and your friendship.”

“You're welcome.”

***

Steve was gluing glass shards to the bottom of a large, square canvas when someone knocked on the door to his studio. A normal door, with a lock that used a key. Tony had complained quite a bit when Steve had requested it. “Come in.”

Angie stepped inside. She surveyed the room for a moment, before saying, “You use this space to create two-dimensional representations of reality by hand using various materials.”

“Yes.” He rose from where he'd kneeled before his easel. “How can I help you Angie?”

“I was exploring the Avengers' strategies for developing activities when they are otherwise idle.” She gestured at her clothing, sweat pants and a T-shirt. “I am learning about leisure, appropriate dress, modes of speech and behaviour.” She visible clamped her mouth shut so she would not give the entire list. When prompted, she could compete with Tony in full techno-babble mode.

He took a moment to translate that. “You want to know about our hobbies?”

“Correct.” She walked towards his current project. “Please explain what the subject will be of this illustration.”

He looked up at it. “That? Oh, uh, an ice scape. I, uh, dream about ice a lot. Painting it is a way to keep the nightmares at bay.”

“Nightmares. Bad memories or fantastical images that disrupt sleep.” Angie turned away from the painting to look at him.

“Yeah, in my case, bad memories. They tend to mess with my thoughts if they run wild.” He swirled his fingers around his temples.

“Yes. I have two experiences that act as corrupt pieces of code if I retrieve them.” She seated herself in the easy chair beneath the window, which Steve used when he needed to sit back and just stare at a painting for a while.

“Humans, we don't really have control over what we think, especially when we've been through something horrible, like a war. Most soldiers have some way of coping, because we see a lot we'd really rather not have seen at all. I was always drawing or painting, even before I went into the army.” Steve went to sit on the floor between the canvas and Angie. The winter sun was high enough that its light poured over both of them. Steve closed his eyes and let it warm him.

Angie was quiet for a minute, as she usually was when someone told her something new about how humans worked. “You use art to defragment. To put your memories in order.” The statement was typical as well, Steve had learned in the past week, an attempt for her to connect new information to what she knew, and request confirmation. “My mother said she used chores to defragment.”

“Yeah, mine did too,” said Steve, and opened his eyes. It wasn't as hard as all that, people understanding each other.

She tilted her head in acknowledgement, and pointed at the painting. “Glass is an unusual material to put on a canvas. Please explain why you are using it.”

He turned around and started explaining how he'd gone to an art fair some months ago, where he'd discovered how people didn't just use paint in a painting nowadays, but fabric and grit and feathers and wood to accentuate it. When the sun's angle was lower and the light more mellow he was struck by the highlights it threw up in her hair. With her permission, he retrieved his sketchbook and started on some ideas for a portrait. Their discussion turned to how she'd designed her body, hair colour and facial features.

A fascinated Steve watched how she tried out different cheekbone sizes, to see what effect it had on the shadows in her face. She, in turn, inspected the sketch he made of each. She decided to sharpen them slightly.

When he let slip his own body was the result of serum and considered the pinnacle of human perfection, she fired off questions until he found himself lecturing on the aesthetics of male bodies, and how it translated into muscle power. How the mechanics of a normal body didn't really apply in his case.

In the end, he invited her to watch the team spar. She accepted eagerly.

***

In the small hours of the morning, Tony surfaced from where he'd been completely zoned on tweaking the suit's internal stabilisation. “Run a last check, JARVIS. After this I'm getting in and riding it until the wheels squeal.”

“No wheels are present in the suit, sir. And may I advise you to sleep for several hours before attempting a test run? Data from my sensors indicate you are suffering from overcaffeination and sleep deprivation.”

“What now? Since when can you see the caffeine in my body without testing my blood?”

“I cannot, sir, but I can predict it from the rate of consumption.”

“Smart-ass. Alright, I'll take a nap.” Tony blinked as he packed his toolkit away. “How's our little grasshopper, by the way?”

“Angie seems to be in the beginning stages of a friendship with Captain Rogers, sir.”

Tony's eyebrows rocketed up. “Angie, is it now?”

“She has explicitly requested I use her first name, sir, since she wishes to have the last name of whoever will adopt her.”

“Uhuh. She thinks she'll need to change families soon? Why?” His question was muffled by the dirty towel he was wiping his face on. Nevertheless, JARVIS understood him.

“Her current adoptive family seems to think she poses too much of a security risk, since they have several other minors living with them.”

 _That_ made Tony Stark straighten up and curse. He tugged on his shirt while he exited the lab. “Alright, yeah, and she's registered as sixteen years old and not really able to live independently either, so she needs someone to take care of her, right?”

“Correct, sir, as always.” JARVIS's voice jumped from speaker to speaker as Tony started jogging, directing him to the gym.

“Would you like to adopt her, JARVIS?”

“That would be illegal, sir, I am not registered as a U.S. citizen.”

“Okay, so you get to be her favourite uncle, or brother.”

JARVIS opened the door for Tony, and he walked in on a sweaty Steve attacking a punching bag with fervour, and Angie standing behind him, observing.

“Already learning to eat up the mancandy, sweetheart?” said Tony, just to see Steve flush and Angie give him a puzzled frown.

“Steve Rogers is not edible.” She flicked her eyes over him. “You have come from the lab. Do you have a reason for coming here instead of upholding guidelines for personal hygiene?”

Tony winced and heard Steve muffle a snicker behind him, “Ouch. And uh, yeah, JARVIS and I got talking about adoption. Well, mostly that he can't and it's still needed, so. Suggestions?”

Steve drew level with him. “Adoption? But... she's not really a child.” He was wiping his brow with smudged fingers. His forehead now had grey streaks on it. Tony manfully refrained from laughing.

“According to the law, I am,” said Angie to Steve, and then looked between them. “It would be ideal if I could continue living here.”

Tony clapped his hands together. “You heard the lady, JARVIS, draw up the papers, expedite the process, hack the red tape to bits. Whatever. We're getting a kid for Christmas.” He turned on a heel. “Angie, welcome to the family, pick a room, keep it clean, and remember that I'm the only one allowed to put my feet on the table.” He gave a wave and went in search of his room, now all his concerns had been laid to rest and his mind was winding down and telling him to find somewhere to roll over and snore.

“He is a very strange man,” said Angie. “Average human behavioural patterns rarely apply to him.”

Steve could only agree.

***

Five days later, JARVIS woke Tony up early, on the only morning of the year Tony didn't really mind it.

“Goodmorning, sir, it is the 25th of december, also known as Christmas day, time is eight-fifteen. The skies are clear, though there is a chance of rain in the afternoon. Steve Rogers is requesting your presence in the kitchen and you are officially father of Angie Stark, age estimated at 16, date of birth unknown, place of birth unknown.”

Tony Stark groaned but rolled out of bed and shambled into the kitchen. Because of his sleepiness, the background noise didn't resolve into music until he was already in the doorway. Then, he paused, so he could take in the frozen forms of Thor, Bruce, Steve and Angie by the table that divided the kitchen from the rest of the open-plan communal floor.

A little further, in the living room, stood Clint and Natasha, feet on the floor at shoulder width and standing face to face, utterly caught up in each other. Their voices wound around the haunting notes of Tchaikovsky's Hymn of the Cherubim. They were in harmony here as their bodies were in battle, Clint's tenor a good background for Natasha's clear soprano.

Tony felt his heart stutter, as it had when he'd heard a Russian Orthodox choir perform it at a Christmas concert, the rest of the event lost to high-class humdrum.

When they trailed off, Natasha turned back to the rest, and gifted Angie with one of her rare smiles. Clint put an arm around her and they seated themselves at the table. The rest followed, Tony only clasping Angie's shoulder quietly in greeting.

Eventually, Thor would break the silence, but not for a while yet. First, they would eat their fill of Christmas Tree pancakes and raising bread and Holiday themed fruit loops, and move to the tree half-buried in presents.

Then, Thor set himself beside the gifts, as democratically elected Distributor, solemnly held op the first one and announced, “From Santa, to Angie, who was a very nice AI this year. Merry Christmas.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because Natasha was not raised by monkeys, and 99% of (communist) Russia did not spend their lives plotting the downfall of the US and America does not have a patent on Christmas, I bring you a Christmas song out of orthodox tradition, Cherubim's Hymn: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZQzW_QfPew. I figure if there's any Christmas music Tony Stark subscribes to, it would not be about Rudolph. This was obtained by five-click-google research. Accuracy may be subject to debate.
> 
> On this fic: it is a Christmas fic, which grew and was finished very late (Valentine's day is almost upon us!) because, while the first and last chapters were written on almost the same day, the middle took a lot of time. I hope you enjoy it, despite the fact that we're well on our way to spring.
> 
> If you're thinking, the technology in this fic is kinda vague: yes it is. I am not an engineer, and the focus is on the idea of AI and what they would be like, so I'm trying to work around my lack of knowledge on the subject. I hope I succeeded. Feedback is always appreciated.
> 
> Since this fic leaves some loose ends behind, it is now a series because, yes, it's got a Valentine's day follow-up.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic started as an idle question when I read the JARVIS series (http://archiveofourown.org/series/23817), namely: what if an AI wasn't Tony's? So, Angie was born. And then she got kidnapped.


End file.
